Reacher was at the bar, his back to it, a third of the way into the room. Near enough the door to be seen straight away, far enough into the room that people wouldn’t forget he was there. The woman called Crystal had finished her third spot and was hauling a harmless guy backstage for a twenty-buck private show when Reacher saw two men emerge at the top of the stairs. Strangers from the north. Maybe thirty years old, bulky, pale. Menacing. Northern tough guys, in thousand-dollar suits and shined shoes. Down here in some kind of a big hurry, still dressed for their city office. They were standing at the desk, arguing about the three-buck cover charge. The girl at the desk glanced anxiously at Reacher. He slid off his stool. Walked over.
‘Problem, guys?’ he asked.
He had used what he called his college-kid walk. He had noticed that college boys walk with a curious tensed-up, limping motion. Especially on the beach, in their shorts. As if they were so tremendously muscle-bound they couldn’t quite make their limbs operate in the normal way. He thought it made 130-pound teenagers look pretty comical. But he had learned it made a 250-pound six-foot-five guy look pretty scary. The college-kid walk was a tool of his new trade. A tool that worked. Certainly the two guys in their thousand-dollar suits looked reasonably impressed by it.
‘Problem?’ he asked again.
That one word was usually enough. Most guys backed off at that point. But these two didn’t. Up close, he felt something coming off them. Some kind of a blend of menace and confidence. Some arrogance in there, maybe. A suggestion they normally got their own way. But they were far from home. Far enough south of their own turf to act a little circumspect.
‘No problem, Tarzan,’ the left-hand guy said.
Reacher smiled. He had been called a lot of things, but that was a new one.
‘Three bucks to come in,’ he said. ‘Or it’s free to go back downstairs.’
‘We just want to speak with somebody,’ the right-hand guy said.
Accents, from both of them. From somewhere in New York. Reacher shrugged.
‘We don’t do too much speaking in here,’ he said. ‘Music’s too loud.’
‘What’s your name?’ the left-hand guy asked.
Reacher smiled again.
‘Tarzan,’ he said.
‘We’re looking for a guy called Reacher,’ the guy said back. ‘Jack Reacher. You know him?’
Reacher shook his head.
‘Never heard of him,’ he said.
‘So we need to talk to the girls,’ the guy said. ‘We were told they might know him.’
Reacher shook his head again.
‘They don’t,’ he said.
The right-hand guy was looking past Reacher’s shoulder into the long narrow room. He was glancing at the girls behind the bar. He was figuring Reacher for the only security on duty.
‘OK, Tarzan, step aside,’ he said. ‘We’re coming in now.’
‘Can you read?’ Reacher asked him. ‘Big words and all?’
He pointed up at a sign hanging above the desk. Big Day-Glo letters on a black background. It said Management Reserves the Right to Refuse Admission.
‘I’m management,’ Reacher said. ‘I’m refusing you admission.’
The guy glanced between the sign and Reacher’s face.
‘You want a translation?’ Reacher asked him. ‘Words of one syllable? It means I’m the boss and you can’t come in.’
‘Save it, Tarzan,’ the guy said.
Reacher let him get level, shoulder to shoulder on his way past. Then he raised his left hand and caught the guy’s elbow. He straightened the joint with his palm and dug his fingers into the soft nerves at the bottom of the guy’s tricep. It’s like getting a continuous pounding on the funny bone. The guy was jumping around like he was getting flooded with electricity.
‘Downstairs,’ Reacher said softly.
The other guy was busy calculating the odds. Reacher saw him doing it and figured full and fair disclosure was called for. He held his right hand up, eye level, to confirm it was free and ready for activity. It was a huge hand, brown, callused from the shovel handle, and the guy got the message. He shrugged and started down the stairs. Reacher straight-armed his pal after him. ‘We’ll see you again,’ the guy said.